Increasing advances in computer technology (e.g., microprocessor speed, memory capacity, data transfer bandwidth, software functionality, and the like) have generally contributed to increased computer applications in various industries. Moreover, operating system platforms have enabled the rapid growth of various technologies that are developed on such systems. Many of such platforms run various applications, wherein addition of extra components such as new hardware devices and associated drivers may become necessary. For instance, these systems allow installation of hardware or software components on respective platforms, whereby such components can be plugged into the system with assurance that they will also cooperate with the system, to interact with other devices/components that have already been installed.
Moreover, operating systems employ storage mediums and databases that further utilize a directory, wherein typically the file system can expose two types of names, namely: the drive letter based names, and the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) file systems that are typically handled by remote file systems.
The drive letter based names can include a path, such as a string path containing directory references (e.g., names), folder names, files, and the like. The path string can be composed by concatenating such references, folder names, files, and the like, wherein the path string can relate to a particular file within the database and/or file storage system.
For example, a traditional file storage system can have a directory containing a folder “Documents,” a sub-folder “Processing,” and a file “application.ext,” wherein “.ext” can be a file extension specified for the particular database and/or file storage system. Thus, the path string can be “C:/” or “D:/” for example. Utilizing such path string can present several problems. The paths and/or path strings can eventually become large such that storing a path for every item and/or file in the system consumes a large amount of storage space and/or is slow to access. Additionally, typical path strings can be limited with the characters associated therewith. Moreover, renaming files and/or items can affect every item in such database and/or file storage system.
Similarly, the UNC name space implements a system of naming files among computers on a network, so that a file on a given computer will have the same pathname when accessed from any of the other computers on the network. For example, if the directory c:\path1\path2\ . . . pathn on computer servern is shared under the name pathdirs, a user on another computer would open \\servern\pathdirs\filename.ext to access the file c:\path1\path2\ . . . pathn\filename.ext on servern. However, interaction with UNC path names can create complexities, when multiple name spaces are to be associated with a single data store, for example.